save the last dance for me
by flufflybunny
Summary: Sometimes it's just sex. Sometimes it's just friendship. Sometimes love and sex run parallel without ever touching: five times Arya and Murtagh danced. heliocentrism


This is a loose sequel to "it's not a love song", because I am finding Arya rather fascinating, and it's in heliocentrism-verse. Hope you like?

Summary: Sometimes it's just sex. Sometimes it's just friendship. Sometimes love and sex run parallel without ever touching; five times Arya and Murtagh danced.

Disclaimer: Chris Paolini's, yeah? Not mine. (though i feel that here i am matching him for pretentiousness)

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save the last dance for me: -arya/murtagh, friendshippy-

_Entree (this is how it starts):_

Murtagh shows up at her room one night, a single knock on her door hanging like a question-mark in the air. She gets up, pushes her blankets away and walks to her door, nightgown fluttering behind her.

Murtagh's standing in her doorframe, lamplight at his back—Morzan's traitor-son (even if he came home) with his dark hair and his too-pale skin; there are shadows around his eyes and when he looks at her it's like he knows her soul. "Hello, Arya," he says simply. "Would you like to dance?

She blinks. Of all the questions she's have thought he might ask, this is not one of them; she had answers to all the others but not to this. "All right," she says, throwing caution to the winds. "Do you know the _Fivarre Allemande?_"

He grins, whole face lighting up. "I do." He offers her his arm and she takes it. "It's been a long time."

_Adagio:_

They dance with the moonlight raining down on them, with Arya's hair and her nightgown trailing in the wind, and this isn't the _recognition, _it isn't that simple soul-deep '_i know you' _of Faolin and Elva and Thorn and Glenwing, but it's enough; both of them know the steps.

She loops her arms around his neck and kisses him. It's nothing more than it is, a meeting of mouths with gratitude and friendship seeping through. He kisses her back, and they start the next dance.

(No one else knows these movements; Eragon is, for all his dragon, still a farm-boy from Carvahall, and by her birth Nasuada is foreign; she was never taught the steps to the ballroom dances of the nobility.)

It is necessity that brings them together—the last two nobles in all the world; he with his father the drunken Lord, she the elf-princess who will never stop running from home and her lover's smile.

_Var. 1 (this is how it blossoms):_

The first time they make love both of them are gentle, feeling out boundaries, careful not to push too hard lest the other break.

The second time, they realize that both of them seek nothing more than penance, and they burn together in a glorious inferno, scourging their souls clean.

It is on the fifth night that Arya rolls over and sees Murtagh's face, white in the moonlight and she thinks that maybe, just maybe, she could love him.

She remembers Nasuada, though, and her fingers hover an inch from his face.

_Var. 2:_

Arya says, "I don't--" Whispers it into his ear, as they dance the third movement of Treganne's Aria, and there is fierce concentration written in the lines of both their faces; this is a woman's dance, but the male part requires just as much effort. She takes a deep breath and trusts herself to his arms.

Murtagh grins, that feral grin that he only uses when something finally _works, _when all the pieces fall into place; she wonders if he knows that it's the same smile as Eragon's. Maybe Selena had wolf-blood in her, somewhere. A wry grin twists the corner of her mouth and he lifts her up, lips brushing her ear as she rises and he whispers, "That's all right. I don't love you, either."

_Coda (this is how it ends):_

Arya twines her hands in the air and emerald magic flies free, sharp green darts burning in the air, catching Empire soldiers in the chests, knocking them down. She flicks her gaze to Murtagh; his sword is out and he's deadly and sharp like his blade, cutting a swathe through the enemy.

Her dragon screams, a steady stream of emerald fire burning sharply through the sky. Saphira twists away from a stray arrow and covers him. She says, _Be careful, _absently knocking someone's sword away from her chest.

Next to her Eragon swears, breathlessly; _Arya, _his voice in her mind, _that's the King. We have to--_

_Yeah, _she says, _go. _

It's always been their plan that Eragon and Murtagh fight the King, while Nasuada and Roran and Arya hold down the fort, but watching them go, worry pangs in her heart. She almost says something (_take me with you; don't leave me behind_) but if _(goddess forbid—oh, men are a bad influence on her) _something happens she'll be needed.

Murtagh smiles at her, once—_goodbye. Tell Nasuada I love her. _And then he's gone, faded into the crowd following Eragon. She closes her eyes for a half-heartbeat and there's a body at her back; she turns and Nasuada grins. "Keep your head in the game, Arya."

Her magic wheels in the sky like her dragon.

_Goodbye._


End file.
